February 15, 2011

No Place for Blood

Vincent Burke2nd Mate, Bob Barker

I have spent 35 years as an activist working and living in the grandeur of emerald rainforests. I have traveled through the desert sand dunes and the dry gullies of the beautiful ruby red interior of Australia. But nothing prepares you for the ancient stillness and the meeting of the present with the still evolving past, when you sail into the crystal amethyst of Antarctica with the comic penguin, the playful seal, the endurance of the seabirds, and the majesty of the whales.

This frozen land has exhilarated me with its mirror flat waters at sunrise, its wildlife on the move and its powerful, stormy seas. Along with this, I have experienced the horror of sailing along a path of intestines, flensed out of the dying whales and spewed out the back of the Nisshin Maru. What sort of human beings exist on that death ship? How can there be a living human evolved to despise the natural world so much as to travel 6000 miles to Antarctica to play out this barbarous drama? How can good people on this planet not scream out and stop this murder?

The Sea Shepherd crews here will not leave until we close down this despicable slaughter and we will attempt to seek forgiveness from this majestic land for the abomination of human activity delivered upon this place.

We are now 500 meters behind the Nisshin “Death Star” and the 2010/2011 whaling season is now shut down. Good people can be triumphant.